Next-Level DeepFakes: Japanese AI Automatically Creates Full-Body Images of People Who Do Not Exist

There are some stories that are just difficult to really wrap our heads around: no clever lede, references to replicants, or science fiction analogy will suffice to introduce the sheer weirdness that they inspire. Case in point: Data Grid, a Japanese artificial intelligence (AI) development company has succeeded in creating a deep-learning AI that can create full-body images of people who do not exist. Like the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) that leveraged massive amounts of data to create hyperrealistic faces, Data Grid's AI not only creates entire "people," it also gives them the ability to move.

The company previously developed a full-person-generating AI, but cited a lack of "expressive power" in that initial effort. "...in order to enhance the expressive power of the generated person," Data Grid's site reads, "we have been working on two research and development of 'whole body generation' and 'motion generation.' The high-precision whole-body generation model has no precedent, and was a challenging research (sic) and development."

Data Grid is planning to partner with fashion companies to see if the AI-generated models could be used as, well, models. Their homepage might also suggest – we can't be sure if this is pure paranoia and speculation on our part – that AI could be coming to a social network near you, calling the faces on its site "idols created by AI."

Then again, that might be slightly better than, say, the Rich Kids of Instagram.